Sometimes I feel like the magic system in the Empyrean series is too soft ya know? Like, there doesn’t seem to be much limitations to what a signet can be. Why is Heaton's signet being able to breathe underwater? Why can someone make another person mute?
Yarros via Fantasy Fangirls Podcast said that the way magic works on the isles was already explained in Onyx Storm. Are we supposed to assume that the irids are the "source" for the islands' magic since they're explicitly told to be magic or what?
The whole thing feels like goo and not in a very good way
This is something that always bothered me so much. It's not that the magic system is "soft" but it's so disarticulated and badly sewn together that it feels like mush
The signets don't follow any logic besides "what the person needs/who they really are" and even that is not believable (What does breathing water say about you as a person? That you'd be a cool fish in another life?). Ry could've gone with a basic elemental classification you find anywhere and just adapted that, but no.
Sure, many dignets do fit in the basic elemental things, but then a few just come crashing into the established walls and the whole thing falls apart. If someone can breathe underwater, can someone turn themselves into a human lamp, could they shapeshift, HOW do you explain breathing underwater, can someone turn objects into potato chips? If someone can astral project then this universe has an astral plane, so how does that work in this context?
On your second point, were we supposed to know wth is happening with the Isles' magic after OS? I assume it has something to do with the hatching grounds, maybe? Dragon's hatching grounds generate magic, assume Griffin magic works similarly, maybe it's the irids' hatching grounds too? Most islands have no dragons, so no magic
With that said, the dragons/griffins channel magic from the sky? So the sky is a source? But the earth also has magic, but that's bad for humans?
